People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.

We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex - but Congress can.

One question about a joke is, how well is the strangeness of the situation resolved? At 'The New Yorker', we retain a lot of incongruity, tapping the playful part of the mind - Monty Python-type stuff. We also try to use humor as a vehicle for communicating ideas. Not editorial comment, but observation.

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can read what everybody has to say about everything. It is fascinating to me, the critiques about humor by people who have no sense of humor.

I'm a Larry David fan, right? And it seems to me that Jewish history from the Talmud on has been a self-deprecating, self-critical kind of humor.

If golf wasn't enjoyable and there wasn't a lot of humor and enjoyment, even though the game is so frustrating, you would wonder why you put yourself through it.

Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it.

I wish I could be as thin as Jessica Simpson. I think she looks gorgeous! I have had Jessica on my show several times, and I can tell you that girl is genuine and funny with a great self-deprecating sense of humor.

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

It is quite true, as some poets said, that the God who created man must have had a sinister sense of humor, creating him a reasonable being, yet forcing him to take this ridiculous posture, and driving him with blind craving for this ridiculous performance.

I've always been a fan of a Johnny Carson because he was so great with an audience and not afraid of self-deprecating humor.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

I do find the sibling connection endlessly fascinating, as I do all family dynamics. I like how siblings seem to create their own parentless mini-civilization within a family, one that has its own laws, myths, language, humor, its own loyalties and treacheries.

My father... very generous, very philanthropic, very charitable man. My siblings and I and my mother continue with always appreciating and always giving back. It's something I hope that I've become a role model for my children.

Hope is the cordial that keeps life from stagnating.

You do see more people that have been freed up over the last couple of hundred years to do work that is more about thinking about or creating things... and I would hope to see that trend continue.

The kidnapped person is so tantalizingly close, kept alive by a devastating hope. Kidnapping or hostage-taking is perhaps the most disturbing form of terror because it turns this hope into a liability that can paralyze.

In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with.

Whether you've seen angels floating around your bedroom or just found a ray of hope at a lonely moment, choosing to believe that something unseen is caring for you can be a life-shifting exercise.

In motivating people, you've got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example - and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.